


Resonance Effect

by 23Murasaki



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Almost a full God General-swap, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, How Do I Tag, Roleswap, hella au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Tales of Protagonist Swap! Because I like jumping on old bandwagons. Also this fic is being edited and rebooted so maybe it will actually go somewhere this time.)</p><p>Seven years ago, Luke was kidnapped from his father's manor in Baticul. While his memory of the kidnapping itself is gone, no real harm was done to him, much to everyone's relief. At seventeen, he stands to marry Princess Natalia and become the next king of Kimlasca. Of course, that's the year Master Van's inexplicably murderous sister Tear accidentally teleports him out of the courtyard and into Malkuth, and everything in his perfect life begins to unravel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hyperressonance

Luke supposed he should’ve counted himself lucky, all considered. Head trauma and fear did strange things to people, and really, he had gotten off lightly. No one had told him as much, but he knew his parents had quickly assumed he was dead, and that the soldiers who had found him had assumed his mind was broken. To emerge from all of that with only a paralyzing fear of small spaces and a month-long gap in his memories was proof, perhaps, that he was favored by Lorelei. 

Seven years prior, it had been Ari who found him first, little Ari the gardener’s granddaughter. She had plunged into the depths of Choral Castle ahead of the soldiers, and had torn the ropes from Luke’s arms with her bare hands. He had never been happier to see her than that day, and he had clung to her and babbled something incoherent about monsters and needles while she had hollered for the White Knights and for Master Van. 

It had, in retrospect, been inappropriate behavior for the scion of the house of Fabre. Ari had been the only one not to hold it against him. If anything, his blind panic had bridged the class divide between them; from that day on she had proven his most stalwart companion as well as his favorite sparring partner. Their friendship drove Duke Fabre, Luke’s father, to distraction and despair, even though it truly was only friendship. Ari, in Luke’s eyes, qualified as a friend and occasional rival first, and a girl some distant second. 

So, really, there was nothing odd about her sitting on his windowsill when he walked into his room– nothing that even his fiancee Natalia could consider odd. 

“Master Van’s here again,” Ari announced by way of greeting. Luke grinned lazily at her. 

“Is Pere covering for you again?” he asked. Ari’s grandfather had a history of lying to important people about where she was, after all, and she was definitely supposed to be tending to the wisterias. Luke’s smile faded abruptly as another thought crossed his mind– Ari was supposed to be in the wisterias and Master Van was supposed to be in Daath. He wasn’t due back for another two weeks at least. “Wait, really? It’s not a training day.”

“He’s completely messing up the schedule, yes,” said Ari with a shrug. Her tone was careless, and Luke wondered not for the first time if she was being purposefully vague. “Apparently something important happened, so he’s reporting in or something.” She frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “It doesn’t smell right, do you know what I mean?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Luke wearily. Among the many reasons why Ari failed to register as girl much of the time was the fact that she was entirely convinced she could smell trouble. Her intuition was quite good, and it had come in handy quite often, but Luke maintained that smelling had nothing to do with it. Besides, it was Master Van. He didn’t smell like trouble, not ever. Ari huffed and hunched her shoulders, making her short pink hair fall across her face.

“Right, right, Master Luke the Rational,” she said, but her big eyes were warm. She never really got angry at him, not properly angry, and he appreciated that. Almost everyone in his life had expectations of him and strong opinions about whether or not he was living up to them. Even his mother and Natalia, both of whom he knew loved him, occasionally lost their tempers. Actually, Natalia liked to yell at him almost more than at anyone else, because he was her fiancé and had to be held to a higher standard. That was easier said than done, what with what Natalia’s normal standards were. 

“More rational than you,” he pointed out with a grin, and Ari stuck her tongue out. That, too, was not a feminine gesture. Between the boyish mannerisms and androgynous gardening uniform, it was possibly a sign of Duke Fabre’s paranoia that he viewed Ari as a potential threat to his son’s marriage.

“Suit yourself, I suppose,” said Ari. “Anyway, your father wants to see you. It sounded important, and he’s in the big important meeting room thing, so you should probably be rational and fancy at him.”

“Ugh.”

“Don’t ugh at me, I’m just the messenger. A little bird told me.” Ari could possibly talk to birds. Luke wasn’t sure if that had been a joke or not. It was not the strangest thing Ari had told him.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m going now.” He swung himself off of the bed and ran a hand through his long red hair. He could fix it. He could also make it even worse, as a tacit revenge on his father for keeping him locked up. It had been years, after all. He could handle himself just fine. He didn’t need a contingent of knights with him to go out into the city, for Yulia’s sake! That too was a sign of his father’s paranoia, he decided. As if agents from Malkuth could get that far past the borders. With that thought in mind he stood, took two steps, and almost keeled over, his vision swimming with a blinding, golden light.

_/fragment of my soul/_

He swore under his breath. This again? The headaches had started after his kidnapping, but he had convinced his parents that they had gone away shortly thereafter. Only Master Van knew about them. And Ari, probably, he admitted to himself, though he had not told her the details. Ari had intuition about things like that.

_/heed my voice/_

Moments later, his vision cleared to the sight of Ari kneeling beside him, her round face drawn with concern. Intuition. Luke forced a weak laugh. At least he could trust her not to mention it to anyone.

“It’s fine. I stood up too fast,” he promised. Ari frowned deeply but didn’t argue, and Luke waved her towards the window again. “Come on, get out of here before someone catches you.”

—————

He wasn’t sure what sort of ass would kidnap the Fon Master, but he was more than willing to offer his services to help Master Van track the bastard down. Master Van told him that on no account was he to ‘go haring off across Auldrant like a pup off of his leash,’ and suggested they go train instead. Luke felt very much like a puppy, then, twirling a practice sword in his hand and listening to Master Van go on about patience and diligence and the art of the sword. 

He liked training with Master Van; while Ari was quick on her feet and a decent fonist, Luke found it highly unlikely that sparring with someone a head shorter than him who got distracted by every cat that crossed the courtyard was going to prepare him for fighting in real life. And he would, eventually, have to face real life. Life beyond the walls of Fabre manor. The thought gave him a new burst of energy and he tried to leap up to strike Master Van from above. His attempt was neatly blocked, though, and his landing was far less than perfect. 

“Patience, Luke,” said Master Van with a slight frown. Luke fought the urge to roll his eyes– that too was unbecoming to do in the presence of anyone besides Ari.

Ari was nearby now, helping her grandfather with his flowerbeds and trying to look like she wasn’t listening in. He glanced sideways at her in hopes of catching her eye, but she was staring at the pansies she was planting. Pansies. Luke didn’t particularly like pansies, nor did he like getting the same lecture for the umpteenth time. Master Van was treating him like a child. 

It was a solid few seconds, then, before they heard the strange melody playing over the sounds of daily life. A few seconds too long, really, because Luke was on his knees before he could process that it was some sort of arte, and he definitely saw Ari collapse into the flowers gracelessly before his vision blurred.

A tall woman in a high-necked Daathic uniform stepped out of the shadows and pointed a weapon at– at Luke? at Master Van? He couldn’t tell. Some part of this felt distressingly familiar– the weight on his shoulders? something she was saying? Spear in hand, she lunged at Master Van, and Luke intercepted her with a clumsy desperation born of fear. The dull thunk of metal on wood was something he had expected. The brilliant, almost burning light was not. 

_/resound. the will of Lorelei shall reach you, and open the way/_

The last coherent thought he had was that his father’s security system had entirely too many holes in it. That, at least, was befitting the scion of the house of Fabre.

————

The short version of what transpired was long enough to give Luke a headache. Not that his head wasn’t already burning, mind. The story was confusing and told, Luke quickly realized, by someone who was not at all comfortable telling stories.

The woman– or girl, rather, she was probably younger than Natalia, really – was Master Van’s sister, and she was trying to kill him – him being Master Van, not Luke, Luke had just gotten in the way – for reasons she was not willing to discuss. Like her brother, she worked for the Order of Lorelei. She knew nothing about the missing Fon Master, as that was not her department or her mission. She was adamant on this point– her department did not deal with the Fon Master, and she took orders from the Grand Maestro, Mohs, who was a sometime ally of Luke’s father.

Her name, which she revealed rather late in her attempted explanation, was Tear. She or Luke or both of them had caused a hyperresonance, which was something Luke had only read about. She did not know how they had caused a hyperresonance. She had about as much of an idea where they were as Luke did, which was essentially none at all. 

Every last one of those statements had had to be dragged out of her, because she had no intention of chatting with Luke now that she had confirmed he wasn’t dead or dying. That, at least, she had been very clear about.

“I haven’t been out of Baticul since I was ten,” he grumbled. “What’s your excuse?” She frowned. 

“I am not often sent out either,” she admitted, then shook her head. “It does not matter. Keep alert. There are wild monsters here.” 

Luke supposed that narrowed down the area they were in: it was neither Baticul nor Daath. That still left most of Auldrant as a possibility. Of the two of them Natalia was better at maps than Luke was, and even Ari would probably be able to hazard a guess as to what sort of place had an oddly-shaped coastline and fields of selenia flowers. Tear took a deep breath and squared her narrow shoulders. At least she was as lost as he was. Despite the fact that it made their situation worse, it made him feel a little bit better. He did not, Luke decided, want to rely on Tear Grants. 

—————

The world was rather larger than Luke or Tear anticipated, but excuses can be made for that. People tended to judge things based on their own knowledge, and Luke knew of Kimlasca and Tear knew… whatever it was she knew. Thus, they had found a road, found a coach, and gotten most of the way to Malkuth’s capital before it had crossed either of their minds that they were somewhere other than Kimlasca, and that left Luke and Tear stranded in a tiny town called Engeve without more than a piece of gald between them. 

The assorted contents of Luke’s pockets (including a bracelet that had been meant as a gift for Natalia, but at least she wouldn’t know) had paid for their poorly-planned trip, because Luke had shoved whatever he had at the coachman in something akin to a panic. He hadn’t wanted to rely on Tear, which was good because Tear had no money. And now he had no money as well, which was a whole other problem apart from being lost. And a whole other problem apart from being lost on Malkuth territory and having almost been run down by a military landship.

In Baticul, he could take what food he wanted and put it on his father’s account, but he doubted his father’s account could be of any use in Engeve. The idea would have made him laugh had his mind not kept circling back to that landship. One landship didn’t mean military mobilization, certainly, and Malkuth had every right to patrol its own lands, but it still set his teeth on edge. Whoever had been in command of that landship had blown the top off of their carriage and nearly run them over– admittedly, in pursuit of bandits, but still, that was overkill. 

Luke had heard reports about the Malkuth army, a mass of bodies and landships and machinery that swept away anything that stood against them. He was not young enough to believe they truly were faceless bogeymen, those officers and soldiers, but he still did not want to cross paths with any member of the Malkuth army. Least of all, he thought, a ranking officer with an itchy trigger finger. It would take someone of no low rank to command a landship of that size.

A small figure in white passed hastily through Luke’s field of vision, distracting him from his worries. He blinked, and in that split second the figure vanished around a corner. What in the world? Feeling a deep sense of that-shouldn’t-be-there, he followed it, Tear’s heels clicking on the cobblestones behind him– around a corner, through a door they likely shouldn’t have gone through –

“Stop! Thieves!” someone shouted, and Luke actually managed to turn and look for the thief before he realized he was being accused. And then they were surrounded by angry peasants with pitchforks. It was right about that moment that Luke wished he had a contingent of knights with him after all.

—————

No amount of explaining would get it through the heads of their captors that they weren’t thieves at all, and Luke was about to give up on playing nice. He had learned some very interesting artes while training with Ari, and he was quite eager for a chance to use them.

No sooner had he thought as much than he and Tear were shoved unceremoniously through the doors of what probably passed for a government building in a dinky little place like Engeve. Inside, two people–a round-faced woman with almost Kimlascan-red curls, seated at the head of the table, and a thin, fair-haired man in spectacles–were having a quiet discussion, but they looked up instantly at the unexpected arrival, and then everyone was talking at once. 

“Thieves–!”

“No we aren’t! Why won’t you–“

“–Caught them in the storehouses–“

“–Yulia’s sake– settle down!”

“Please hear us out–“

“–hope for thirty seconds of quiet in a so-called quiet farming village, honestly–“

“–so sorry about this –“

“–saboteurs–“

“–strangers!”

“We’ve not been here more than half an hour–“

“Liars!” 

“Enough!” snapped the woman at the head of the table, setting her teacup down with a rather piercing clank. Her companion flinched away from her, but the peasants, at least fell silent. She, Luke thought, was probably in charge of Engeve, because the man wore the blue uniform of the Malkuth military. But what sort of soldier jumped at loud noises? Possibly, it occurred to him, the same sort of soldier who would shoot down civilians if he thought there were bandits nearby. 

“Ma’am,” said one of the peasants respectfully. “We caught these thieves sneaking around in the storehouses!” The soldier–no, the _officer_ , given how fancy his uniform looked–muttered something that sounded like ‘Kimlasca’, his sharp eyes fixed on Luke’s bright red hair. Oops. Now that he thought about it he should have thought to cover up such a distinctive trait. There wasn’t a point in doing so now, though, so he set his jaw and tried to meet the officer’s gaze. The man didn’t let him.

“We aren’t thieves,” said Tear patiently. “I don’t know what is happening here, but my companion and I have only been here half an hour. We came by coach.” And your friend’s stupid landship nearly killed us, Luke wanted to add, but he held his tongue.

“The Tartarus did pass a civilian coach on the way here,” admitted the officer a little sourly. “Still, that doesn’t mean you weren’t up to no good!”

“I thought I saw someone sneaking around,” said Luke quickly. “The… it was weird, like someone who didn’t belong…”

“A likely story, that,” scoffed the officer. He was one to talk. What was he doing in Engeve? This was not the sort of town that boasted a regular military presence, and none of the peasants seemed particularly comfortable with him being there. 

“Colonel, please,” demurred the woman. She, by contrast, seemed like a warm sort of person, with a face that smiled easily. She smiled in a conciliatory way now, first at the officer and then at Luke and Tear. “What in the world would these children want with our storehouses? Their story is more likely than you’d assume. There is no reason to fret.” The colonel looked rather like he thought there was always reason to fret.

“They could be saboteurs,” he said stubbornly. 

“What would we be trying to sabotage?” Luke snapped, his patience wearing thin. He wasn’t sure what there even was in Engeve. Did people in Malkuth routinely sabotage small town markets?

“And using what?” Tear added. “You can search us if you would like, but we are not hiding anything.” That was a lie. A search of her would reveal three different knives and an old-looking pendant, though it could be argued that she wasn’t really hiding any of them.

“Oh, that settles it, then,” said the woman with a broad smile. “Wouldn’t you say so, Colonel? Now, maybe we can return to the topic of the actual thieves?” 

The colonel – Luke made a mental note of his uniform decorations for future use– very visibly would not say so, and shot Luke another venomous look before shrinking into his seat. Luke glared back. The man was getting on his nerves.

“Yes,” said another voice, this one far softer and from somewhere behind the mob. “I think I can help you there.” A boy stood in the doorway, clutching something fluffy in his hand. Luke’s first impression was of some sort of small furry animal– maybe a kitten, or a newborn bunny– and the white clothes and tassels did nothing to counteract that. The boy trotted carefully around the peasants and presented the bit of fluff to the woman in charge. “This is fur from a sacred cheagle, Miss Rose,” he explained. “I think they may be the ones stealing from your stores.”

——————

It was incredibly obvious to all present that the colonel did not trust Luke and Tear in the slightest. Luke wasn’t sure if that was because he had guessed who they were or if the man was just distrustful by nature. Possibly both. Luke personally thought the colonel could give his father a run for his money in terms of paranoia. 

Still, the man had fussed and fretted until Luke had promised to personally investigate the cheagles just to shut him up for a while. The boy with the too-quiet voice had been grateful for that, anyway, and Luke had learned a little belatedly that he had just met the presumably missing Fon Master. Well, that explained all the deference that was being paid to the kid, though not what he or the Malkuth army were doing in a farming town. Luke had wanted to press for more answers on that front, but that would have meant facing a continued interrogation from the colonel.

He and Tear had fled the building before either of them could be asked to explain to a Malkuth officer what he was doing on the wrong side of the border. In fact, Luke was trying so hard to look not-suspicious just in case the colonel decided to give chase, all the while wondering how the Fon Master had ended up both kidnapped and in Engave that he nearly walked into a girl with dark pigtails.

“Sorry,” she said flatly, dusting herself off. It seemed more for show than anything else– her neat purple uniform didn’t actually have any dust on it. “Didn’t see you there.” She seemed quite distracted herself, and made to brush past him to look around another corner.

“Are you looking for someone?” Tear asked, staring at her curiously. The girl turned and looked her up and down, and Luke noticed a similar sort of pattern on their clothes. Were they both from Daath, then? From the Order? Even as Tear spoke, the girl’s expression changed, a rather unnerving grin spreading across her previously blank face. She took a bouncy little half-step toward them, fingers laced behind her back and her eyes shut. The change in manner made Luke take a half step back, even though she was really rather tiny.

“Yes, actually,” said the girl, now chirpy instead of flat-voiced. “I’m a Fon Master Guardian, and…” She trailed off and made a vague gesture. “Well, I guess I’m not a very good one, am I?” she finished with a chuckle. “It seems I’ve lost my charge– oops!”

“He’s at the mayor’s house,” said Luke. “With the mayor and some officer.” The girl pulled a face which was actually quite close to the one Luke imagined Ari would pull under the circumstances. Ari, he thought, would have a good laugh at the colonel’s expense.

“That old man’s not still yelling about rappigs, is he?” the girl muttered. “Anyway. Gotta run. Before Ion wanders off again. Thanks!” And with a cheery grin that certainly did not reach her reddish eyes, she ran off in the right direction.

Luke frowned after her. This was the sort of person Ari would smell trouble on. A pang of homesickness hit him at the thought: Ari would be worried sick. Natalia, too, of course, because undoubtably she would know by now, someone would have told her, but when Natalia worried laws were drawn up and battalions would move and problems would be solved. Ari would probably worry herself sick, like Mother. Suddenly he felt very cold.

“Luke?” Tear asked cautiously. He had gotten better at masking his feelings over the years, but apparently some people could still read him like an open book. He did not want to add Tear to the list, so he hastily tried to school his expression into something akin to boredom.

“It’s nothing,” he lied. “I just need to get back home as soon as I can.” Tear’s expression softened slightly. The change was incremental, but she looked sincere. Anyone would, Luke thought, compared to that Fon Master Guardian. 

“I understand that,” she said with a nod. After a moment she spoke again. “And I can pay for our next carriage, if need be. It is my fault that we are here.” 

“If all goes well, the Fon Master will pay our way home,” said Luke. Tear’s lips twitched into what may have been a smile as they walked toward the inn.


	2. Tartarus

[SORRY!! This chapter is being edited!!]


	3. Raid

[SORRY!! This chapter is being edited!!]


End file.
